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Abstract
Clusters that emerged in the past have changed during the latest decades, so that today the research challenge in economic geography is on their evolution over time. The aim of this paper is to update the evolutionary path of SME Italian clusters, which faced the economic crisis are undergoing a process of decline in the number of firms. Furthermore, changes in the techno-economic landscape and in the competitive environment have generated new challenges. In this context, some leading firms, able to connect local resources (and firms) to global networks, have emerged over time and today they act as a gatekeeper. The focus will be on local networks interacting with leading firms and particular attention will be devoted to the pattern of co-evolution and to the geographical dimension of this co-evolutionary process. To empirically verify if other firms in the cluster may co-evolve with the leading firm over time, a deep analysis of the Gucci network in the leather products cluster in Florence will be carried out.
Notes
1. For the criteria used to draw clusters see Boschma and Randelli (Citation2012).
2. As Fermo is an independent province since 2009 and was created separating a part of Ascoli Piceno province, to allow a view of the evolution in the period 1995–2011, this paper consider those two provinces as one and we will call it Fermo-Ascoli.
3. In the 2010 Tod's reached a revenue peak of €806 million, and Gucci 4.2 billion.
4. A different organization in the manufacturing process enabling Gucci to respond quickly to customer needs and market changes while still controlling costs and quality.
5. In first quarter 2008 the number of firms grew due to, not as much a positive firm entry rate, but rather a number of already registered firms that turned from inactive to active.
6. In this paper we study only the evolution of the leather manufacturing clusters, although it is clear that a leading firm may support also some other related sector, as in the case of Gucci, that of accessories, mainly made in brass.